"Dad Jazz"

Well he's not alive anymore...

obviously i'm all on this stuff. crusaders are a very nice call. all that stuff is so great. i'm partial to second crusade and southern comfort. cannonball adderley's 60s run at capitol is very much worth your time. would also highly recommend lou donaldson's mid-late 60s blue note run. here's "midnight creeper" from 1968:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-juHx0LdgM

i'll be hanging out in here if that's okay.

Peak crusaders was right here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiXAYEUwmhQ

where we meet:
scott's occasional swinging old jazz thread (moldy figs to 1980)

And check those Crusaders albums with BB King.

Gloria Lynne, Dakota Staton and other female jazz vocal balladeers

RFI: Vocal jazz songform (mainly vocalese and its enablers, like Horace Silver)

ilx has it so you can't tell by looking at least sometimes, but those last two are more threads.

xp ah well, that’s too bad

i’ve been at a funeral (last surviving grandparent, 92) and hanging out with my parents and other family all day, just fyi the suggestion was in earnest

Cleo Laine?

I’ve been on a Lou Donaldson listening binge lately, one album per day chronologically. He went from Charlie Parker disciple to hard bopper to soul jazzman with almost never a false step. (There’s a couple ill-advised disco albums.) Gravy Train is a favorite.

Grant Green’s The Latin Bit also makes me really happy.

And Kenny Burrell’s Midnight Blue is one of the best albums ever recorded.

co-sign across the board there, dan. all of grant green's late 60s/early 70s funk sessions on blue note are alltimers; the live albums get pretty scorching at times, but are recommended for this vibe all the same.

maybe a less obvious answer, but still right in line are the mid-70s abdullah ibrahim albums. most of them are just two long tracks, one on each side of the lp. and they all have his signature "cape jazz" sound through that 70s funk lens. almost like if fela decided to do straight up soul jazz. everything he's done is worthwhile, but that stuff is my favorite for a reason. check out "soweto is where it's at" from 1975-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAD2CdGU3dE

one more mention for now-
les mccann's layers! it's soul jazz, but also mostly a smooth synth album and nothing else i've ever heard sounds quite like it. it goes from loungey lava lamp vibes to wicked wah'd out funk. here's the opening tune "sometimes i cry"-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD6abEPnt2U

honestly one of those records i could put on anytime. definitely an alltimer.

Does loads of that CTI stuff fit?

perhaps not exactly the vibe you want (dad joke) but my dad loves MJQ

I'm only asking because I used to buy jazz cd's at my job and come from a more academic bias, but then I'd come home and this would be the jazz people's daddies listened to. After Dad died, I've been finding lots of records where I think "Dad would have loved this" and I feel more connected to my roots.

But yeah, thanks for the suggestions!

To me, the term implies "defanged, but still classic"

The precise era it conjures really depends on what age your dad is (or would be)...maybe if you're 18, dad jazz = medeski, martin, and wood?

To me, MJQ sounds about right (my dad is 80). Or those Ray Charles/Milt Jackson collaboration albums, which are pure comfort food.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loKscILy_9I
My dad also keeps buying me unplayably beat up Ahmad Jamal records that he finds at flea markets.

But OP did specifically ask for soulful 60's. I feel like this is squarely in Austin's wheelhouse, so i'm looking forward to seeing what other rec's he has here.

My dad introduced me to Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Miles Davis. He made fun of stuff like Spyro Gyra.

I must have been only five or six when my Dad brought home Blues on Bach when it came out, but I still remember being fascinated by the album cover and this track in particular

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lIcqKLPaZ0

That melody still sounds wrong to me on baroque instruments. It's supposed to be on vibes or Moog.

I will say that my dad did have Chuck Mangione's record, although I guess that was 70s cheese and not 60s soul.

Does loads of that CTI stuff fit?

― Stevo, Thursday, May 25, 2023 2:18 AM

i would think so! certainly some of the smaller group stuff had its moments. here's stan turrentine, milt jackson, and some cti regulars from 1972-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpfgVcY9Dn0

"sister sanctified"

i love mjq btw! and tbh, that strikes me as probably the kneejerk answer to the question "what is dad jazz?"

Any kind of "dad jazz" is okay - whether you're 54 or 28.

I'm just amused with the concept now.

One time my dad took me for a ride during a break from work and he had the "smooth jazz" station on. I said, "WTF are you listening to this I thought you hated it" and he said he wanted to hear what was good in it.

Ahmad Jamal Trio - “Poinciana”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqIORW3MA5o

In very dad-like fashion I’m going to say how much I love all the incidental background sounds of this hotel lounge, the ice buckets, the murmuring, etc

ahmad jamal very much in line with the mjq iteration of "dad jazz" and i am 100% on board with all of it.

my dad likes the idea of coltrane but finds most of it (even stuff like “my favorite things”) much too aggro

he likes “bags & trane” a lot though

Austin brought up layers but I think the even more jazz dad album is his album with Eddie Harris swiss movement

(Les McCann)

les mccann in general seems right in line with all of this.

On his first night in Toronto, my dad saw Muggsy Spanier playing at a club.

My mom saw Miles in the late 1950s, whereas my dad's jazz was

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv7-APjke20

I had never heard either the Dollar Brand or the Les McCann albums Austin mentioned. Those were a nice start to my morning, but my dad would have been completely perplexed by the McCann. (His knowledge/appreciation of jazz pretty much begins/ends with Al Hirt, though.)

My dad claims to have bought Count Basie a drink

Narada Michael Walton handed my mom his drum sticks at the end of some fusion concert in the 70s, Mahavishnu or Corea I think. I played with them when I was a kid.

my pops also fw the Stephane grappelli + joe pass album, as well as Django Reinhardt

Didn't all those "live" records fake the live sounds? Like the foley artist was clinking cocktails at the mixing desk to add ambiance?

Brubeck

enoch-
i know that was kind of the case with the david axelrod-produced cannonball adderley live albums. they basically created a "venue" in studio b, set up an open bar, and encouraged folks to hoot and holler and have a great time. so while all of the audience "participation" on those is technically "real", it was a fabricated environment.

My grandpa loved all kinds of jazz, but he was very into stuff like Ahmad Jamal, Ramsey Lewis, MJQ, and I very much think of them as "grandpa jazz" as a result

Stanley Turrentine too, and Les McCann. A lot of the names mentioned ITT

Flim & The BB’s

i know that was kind of the case with the david axelrod-produced cannonball adderley live albums. they basically created a "venue" in studio b, set up an open bar, and encouraged folks to hoot and holler and have a great time. so while all of the audience "participation" on those is technically "real", it was a fabricated environment.

This was also the case with Pharoah Sanders' Live at the East; actually rolling trucks out to Brooklyn was prohibitively expensive (plus the East was an all-black-no-exceptions venue, so they'd probably have had to hire black recording engineers and Bob Thiele wouldn't have been able to work) so they did it in the studio with "friends and family" clapping.

I think i was also getting "Nighthawks at the Diner" mixed up in there in the "live" albums (which is more in the genre of Old-Man Hat Fake Jazz)

Narada Michael Walton

the most rhythmically astute member of TV's Walton family

so they did it in the studio with "friends and family" clapping.

Pharoah's Black Unity, a studio record, also ends with a group of spectators applauding, I assume reacting in real time to the performance we've just heard.

the Pershing album was in fact recorded live in that hotel lounge over two nights. Ahmad Jamal had been doing a residency there for months.

Ha ha that's what I meant. Going through my dad's stuff I think he had an Ahmad Jamal record.

My mom was Italian and they are clean freaks and she threw my dad's stuff out regularly or gave it away but sometimes I'd find bits here and there of his sixties past.

ahh man, you know who i completely forgot about? the INCREDIBLE jimmy smith! he's mostly remembered by folks my age for root down, but all of his 60s blue notes are worthwhile. i like back at the chicken shack and, for the verve stuff, the co-led session with wes montgomery is about as classic as it gets for 60s soul jazz.

(wes montgomery's later albums also highly recommended, btw)

This is probably too out to be dad jazz but it's Dollar Brand so retains that hospitable edge *and* it contains Johnny Dyani, Don Cherry, Roy Brooks and John Betsch. Magnificent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJA3vrLSdqA

heard this today and thought of this thread (which i've only glanced at)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeDNtD6fG2k

tbh at this point i think of a lot of this stuff as Austincore and normally would've posted this in scott's moldy figs thread.

aren't most of you dads at this point anyway?

i think of a lot of this stuff as Austincore

proudly humbled ty 😊

Hadn't heard that Nat Adderley record, it's sick ty. Would love to grab it on vinyl (dad move).

some choice deep cut action for the second half of your monday-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmMHNCwIlYw
catalyst - "new found truths" (1972)

what up Austin

Is this the new thread for this stuff or the Moldy Figs thread?

Anyway, I really love this Cedar Walton track lately, "The Electric Boogaloo Song." Soul jazz, but with a loose, loping groove rather than tight funk. Rest of the album is good but doesn't sound like this cut.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHy0V1jd6P4

Great track Austin, what gorgeous Rhodes and drumming (apparently that's Billy Hart on percussion/maybe second drum kit?).